"Cancelled Operation Day Surgery"

Yesterday my urology operation in day surgery at Royal Shrewsbury Treatment Centre was cancelled at the last minute due to the anaesthetist not attending the list I and some other patients were on and there being no true and workable/flexible back-up plan for replacement or emergency/reserve anaesthetists to take this list instead. There needs to be a full and truly flexible staff usage and utilisation between BOTH trust sites as the Telford anaesthetist did not want to work at Shrewsbury site to cover this list despite us patients desperately needing it and instead being cancelled as a result of NO ANAESTHETISTS. Your trust and especially the Shrewsbury site needs to recruit more anaesthetists, or certainly staff that can take on the role of this like American anaesthetic nurses/practitioners do, and also use the on-call ones if necessary to cover these lists if the original anaesthetist is not attending the theatre list. I can easily see you have serious recruitment and retention issues and need to better look into and immediately address this before something more serious happens as a consequence.

This has certainly made my confidence in your hospital fall quite a bit as I see it happening again next time and hope it does not and that you will have looked at this and put something properly into place to prevent this from happening in future. I was made to travel quite a distance to get here and am quite unwell and disabled so it was very difficult to get here in the first place, nevermind then being told I have been cancelled after sitting about in a waiting room for a bit, so have to go all the way back home for nothing. It would have been better to have told me about this before I set off out as there was apparently time to at least let the patients on that list know there is a problem and that they were now trying to get an anaesthetist from Telford site to take the list but that they may not be able/wish to so there is definite uncertainty of the operation even happening and then ONLY call the patients into the hospital when they know that anaesthetist from Telford had agreed to attend and was there on your Shrewsbury site, which they had not and refused unfortunately. This means I and many others on that same list with no anaesthetist cover at all would not have had to travel and waste our time and money for nothing as we would have all not attended, knowing there was no chance of getting our operation anyway so no point. I feel that I as a person in my OWN right was not involved in any decisions about what was happening or about my care so am very angry on that too. Make sure patients are centre in EVERYTHING regarding their care. 'No decisions about them without them'. Patient-centred care seems to not exist still despite all the mouthing about it. Actions speak louder than words. Unfortunately, I do feel that the anaesthetists from the two different sites of Shrewsbury and Telford do not wish to work on the other site.